The phones were somewhat expensive for their day but not exorbitantly so, and the service was not extremely expensive either (at least not under the original rates AT&T was pushing), yet the service failed.

Moreover, that book reviewers would so exorbitantly praise such a novel, as in fact most of them did, strongly calls into question the standards being applied by those working in that branch of "literary journalism" represented by newspaper book sections.

Having debunked the prospects for storing wind (or solar) energy given current (or even imagined technology) we are left with an exorbitantly expensive intermittent energy source which when push comes to shove maintenance will be foregone.